This Painting Represents the Artist S Conception of the Life Cycle in Allegorical Terms

The Three Ages of a Barrister

In the Three Ages of Man, Titian represented a conception of a man’s cycle of life: childhood, manhood and old age. He depicted childhood as frivolous, and carefree. The infant’s preoccupation is to search for blissful warmth. The young man is amorous and adventurous. He is being importuned by a young woman and although he is naked, he is exhausted and seems to be trying to resist her. The old man stares at two skulls: he seems without hope, contemplating the meaning of life and searching in vain for an answer in the eye-sockets of a human skull.

What would Titian have made of a Barrister ? He might have depicted the infant Barrister searching for an income, the junior Barrister with too much work trying to turn some away and the old Barrister searching in vain for an answer to the point of it all before he dies, contemplating two decomposed wigs.

In this analogy there is, I hope, a serious point. The Barrister spends his life haunted by insecurities. In infancy, he or she lacks income. As a junior he or she is terrified to turn away work for fear that he or she will regret it. And at the end of it all, contemplating retirement, the senior Barrister has nothing in the form of capital wealth to sell in the market place.

There are other insecurities and strains of course in 2008: chief amongst them perhaps are the fear of a complaint, fragile relationships with Clerks, fee collection and aged-debt and Chambers’ Politics. But how might these issues be less burdensome if the young Barrister had a guaranteed income, the junior Barrister could delegate his work without losing it irrevocably and the senior Barrister could sell his practice or his share in it to someone else ?

I have had an unorthodox career in many respects. All I ever wanted was an orthodox one in the Temple. Instead, my London Chambers collapsed when I was 5 years’ of Call and having obtained the prize of a Tenancy in London, I had nowhere to go other than out of the profession. Instead of accepting defeat, I set up my own set of Chambers in 1991. I led that set for 13 years. It was always busy and popular. But in its success, lay the germ of its demise. Frankly, I discovered that it, or its members were unmanageable. There were no clear lines of management. An autocratic approach worked best in the early years of growth, but as chambers grew, autocracy was resented. A democratic approach was desired and was created, but led to crippling, naval-staring stasis and internal dissension.

An injection of democracy led to a Constitution and a Management Committee. But within 2 years of the advent of this democratic regime, the Management Committee suffered so much from in-fighting, that it became a cancer which destroyed Chambers completely. How would Titian have depicted the life-cycle of a Barristers’ Chambers which started with so much promise, was always busy, created careers for numerous people and which then madly and demonically consumed itself.

By 2004, at 19 years of call, I had been caught in the cross-fire of the meltdown of a London set. I had also experienced both the creation and self-destruction of my own set. But it led me to the conviction that the Barristers’ Chambers model might well be fundamentally flawed and I set about trying to practise as a SP – despite, I might say, an invitation from an established set in London.

So why do I continue to practise as a SP ? Answer: to eliminate Chambers Politics from my life. After I set up on my own in 2004, I discovered a remarkable fact - my income increased by a third. At first, I thought this was a quirk of fate. I was wrong. The reason it increased by a third is that I had more time for my own work. I did not have to worry about the management of Chambers. That commitment had taken up about a third of my time.

And so I view the Legal Services Act 2007 through the kaleidoscope of three unique experiences:

(1) the traditional London model of a Barristers’ Chambers, (2) having set up and headed up my own Chambers for 13 years outside of London and (3) as a SP:- three quite distinct business models.

Of course, the SP model has much to commend it. It is a state of complete intellectual and professional freedom. You work where you want, how you want, and when you want. But if you have to make a living from this job, the freedom of SPship brings heavy responsibilities. I expect that I work harder and longer hours as a SP than I did before, precisely because there is no sense of there being an institutional catch-net, no back up professionally or administratively. The successful SP has to be highly motivated, highly organised and must have the mental strength to deal with self-doubt or even loneliness. But overall, the last 4 years have given me a fascinating insight into a different business model for the Bar. Perhaps I should call it the “Harley Street model” – the Consultant who practises on his own, achieves excellence on his own and is no less respected for being on his own.

But in many ways, people like me practise as SPs for the very reason that the traditional Chambers model has not worked for them and – and this is the point - there seems to be no other legitimate business model. It is too easy to assert that that may be so because SPs are maladjusted malcontents, in other words, failures and outcasts. Those from solid establishment sets may well experience the temptation to think of SPs in that way. I am quite sure that many people would disapprove of SPs – especially SPs like me who do Public Access work. However, they should stop and think: why is it that so many people like me choose to practise outside of the traditional model ? Is something wrong with the SP or with the traditional model ? Why does the conventional Barrister business model fail to accommodate the talents and energy of so many SPs ?

But let me return to my theme: the three ages of a Barrister. What I envisage for the Bar is a Chambers model which begins to resemble a law firm without losing its distinct character and without diminishing the status of Barrister or the independence of the Bar.

Let me take each Barrister age or stage in turn.

First, the infant Barrister’s insecurity is income: I suggest that the post-LSA business model should enable Barristers to employ other Barristers. The employee Barrister would then have the security of an income. The Chambers or other employer organisation would be able to bill out the employee Barrister. The BSB Consultation Paper approves of the idea of Barristers employing Barristers, but it is silent on the question of the LDP or ABS billing-out the employee Barrister for profit. There will be little incentive for LDPs or ABSs to employ Barristers at all unless the employer can profit from the services of the employee and grow his business.

Second, the junior Barrister’s insecurity is too much work and too little back-up. He should be able to employ Assistant Barristers to help him with his work, without fear that the latter will simply be able to walk off with that work and treat it as his or her own. He too should be able to bill out the Assistant Barrister for profit. And imagine a utopian world in which you can have a family holiday or recuperate from illness and earn some income at the same time.

Third, the senior Barrister should be in a position where he is able to start a Chambers, capitalise it, grow it, treat it as his business, be its salaried managing member and then sell it, or his share in it when he retires. If that means partnership or a Company structure, then so be it.

It may seem odd that the impressionable young man who came to the Bar and has experienced the horror of two Chambers’ splits, should stand up and say that he loves the Bar – but I do ! I do not want it to disappear. And in the Legal Services Act 2007, I see not death by fusion, (this evening’s theme), but renewed life for the Bar in the form of new business models, which enable enterprising Barristers to start new Chambers, to employ other Barristers within the commercial discipline of employment, to set down clear demarcations of ownership and management of the business and to have a proper, modern system of delegation of work between Barristers, all operating within a framework of business ownership.

And at the end of it all, the entrepreneur Barrister should have been able to leave behind him a stable commercial institution for the next generation of Barristers, whilst taking into retirement the fruits of his courage, enterprise and work.

My model is perhaps not even a LDP, but a BDP – a Barristers’ Disciplinary Partnership. In the context of Public Access work, it will become essential that para-legal functions can be performed within Chambers. I am returning a number of my PA cases to firms of solicitors, but in a commercial sense that is surely bad business. The danger however, is that if we incorporate (in both senses of the verb) Barristers and Solicitors under one roof, we destroy the Bar by fusion. But do we ? Brick Court Chambers with two in-house solicitors will still be Brick Court Chambers. The real risk is Brick Court Chambers with 50 in-house solicitors. It seems to me that it is the big, established sets who owe the profession a very special responsibility to use new-found freedoms responsibly. Mergers of large sets with firms of solicitors may well become very tempting, but such mergers will surely in themselves destroy the Bar altogether. I venture to suggest that my model is one which tackles the insecurities of the Bar and ameliorates them, whilst retaining the character of the Bar as a distinct profession.

If the LSA enables the Bar to set up better-balanced business models in terms of finance, employment, administration, delegation and ownership it will breathe new life into the Bar. If in fact it becomes a charter for mindless mergers between mega-sets and mega-firms, the Bar will disappear. It would perhaps be ironic if the only “true” Barristers left in 10 years’ time were SPs like me.

The Titian of 2025 might then portray me as an old, stooping Barrister, drained of life by school fees, against a canvas of skyscraper offices, contemplating a decomposed Euro-gown !

Marc Beaumont

April 2008

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